Abstract:
The recovery of the tiger population in India is celebrated widely as a conservation ‘success’. In contrast to the demographic increases of tiger populations, the human dimension of the rewilding of these carnivores has not been adequately addressed. This talk discusses the social aspects of the reintroduction of tigers in Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR), Central India. I focus on the Pardhi community, which has undergone significant socio-economic transformations in connection with wildlife conservation, leading to a double-layered process of rehabilitation of both Pardhis and the tigers. One of the outcomes of the ‘success’ of rewilding tigers in PTR was the rise in tiger tourism. Pardhis are engaged as tour guides where their traditional knowledge of wildlife is utilised in eco-tourism initiatives. While the large carnivores are rewilded, people’s connection with forests shows paradoxical linkages with PTR in unexpected ways. The talk highlights the socio-historical perspectives on a multi-layered, multi-being landscape that habitually gets masked in wildlife conservation. Our existing understanding of rewilding is destabilised when we bring forth the social perspectives of local communities and their relations with forests and wildlife.
Speaker Bio:
Ambika Aiyadurai is Associate Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Gandhinagar. She is an anthropologist of wildlife conservation with an interest in human-animal relations and community-based conservation. Ambika has more than 20 years of research on human dimensions in wildlife conservation with a special focus in Northeast India. She completed her PhD in Anthropology from the National University of Singapore and is trained in natural and social sciences with an MSc in Wildlife Sciences from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and in Anthropology from University College London. Her research is at the intersection of human-animal studies, environment humanities and marginalization. Her publications include Tigers Are Our Brothers: Anthropology of Wildlife Conservation in Northeast India (Oxford University Press, 2021) and the edited volume Beings and Beasts: Human-animal relations at the ‘margins’ (Cambridge University Press, 2025).